


let's try that again, minus the infectious influence

by trascendenza



Category: Community
Genre: Black Character, Character of Color, Episode: s02e06 Epidemiology, M/M, Multiracial Character, Muslim Character, POV Character of Color, POV Male Character, Telepathy, Zombies, chromatic protagonist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-13
Updated: 2010-11-13
Packaged: 2017-10-13 04:45:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/133079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trascendenza/pseuds/trascendenza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Random telepathy, human blankets, pinnacle life experiences and the best way to spend a Halloween.</p>
            </blockquote>





	let's try that again, minus the infectious influence

Troy says, "But we're friends." Abed hears him, and thinks, _yes, Troy, we are._

Troy tastes like satisfaction, the flavor unrolling down Abed's throat in trickling ribbons. _Sorry,_ a part of him thinks, because there's a pinprick of consciousness that's still aware of what he's doing, that Troy's trying to help him, help them all.

The other part, humming in the pit of his stomach, wonders why he didn't do it sooner.

Troy stumbles away from them. Abed watches him go, then resumes staggering, groaning, and generally carrying on in a zombie-like fashion. He finds that the zombie state of mind agrees with him. It's nothing like he ever imagined -- Abed always theorized that it would be a singleminded, hyperfocused state blissfully free of moral quandaries while Troy argued that the inherent brutality was unpleasant no matter how you sliced it. But it's none and all of those things; Abed is a bird bobbing in the ocean of his subconscious. His beak and head are comfortably tucked under his wing for protection. This results in him being shaped like a football, or more accurately a very large and feathered almond. Abed, at this point, is beyond metaphor. He _is_ metaphor.

He blinks and there's Troy, perhaps summoned by the football imagery as he so often is. He can feel that Troy has joined him, that they're in this together now. Troy floats toward him, and Abed feels a smile rise up in swelling waves. _Hello, fellow waterfowl,_ he thinks, and places his hands on Troy's shoulders. They feel dense and spongy; Abed pushes his thumb into hollow underneath the bone, fascinated.

Troy looks at him, glassy-eyed, and Abed hears Troy's thought roll toward him, slow and thick as molasses. _I think this will be over soon._ It coats the inside of Abed's mind sweetly.

Abed moves his hands up Troy's neck. He settles his fingers along the curve of Troy's skull, ten connectors slotting perfectly into their receivers, and the stray sparks of Troy's lingering human nerve impulses tickle along Abed's knuckles. _Unfortunate,_ Abed thinks as the chill air slowly suctions the sensation out of his skin.

 _Also_ , Troy thinks, stepping forward and biting at Abed's lower lip, _I'm not a bird._

 _But I thought we were in this together,_ Abed thinks, a twinge of disappointment dimming the brightness they've been generating.

 _Fine,_ Troy thinks, and he's glittering like laughter, _but I'm a sexy bird._

 _The sexiest,_ Abed agrees, and Troy still tastes like satisfaction, especially to the burgeoning human senses starting to churn the waves.

*

When Abed opens his eyes, the first thing he notices is that he's tangled up on the floor with Troy. The second thing he notices is that Troy isn't awake yet, and how with each breath Troy takes in he sighs a little bit at the end, like a kid.

Abed smiles.

Abed also has no idea what's going on, so he cranes his head up, looking around the room. There are faceless, uniformed bodies moving around with guns raised and Abed blinks at them, freezing so as not to attract their attention. He surreptitiously examines the students, all still on the floor, and then he notices that most people aren't tangled up with anyone else.

 _They didn't arrange us like this,_ Abed realizes, and blinks again, and then looks at Troy, processing this turn of events.

He lays back down, draping himself over Troy. Troy is still shirtless and his skin is chilled and prickled from the cold temperature. Troy shivers a little, wrapping an arm around Abed.

Abed smiles, snuggling down. He makes a very good blanket.

*

"So, uh." Troy is walking beside Abed with a shuffling gait. It makes Abed blink, giving him a déjà vu sensation that he's seen this before, and it feels like the answer's just on the tip of his brain, but it won't come to him. "Sorry about, uh, you know."

"The fondling?" Abed prompts, because he can. Friendship is nothing if not built on the bedrock of the cruel and unnecessary prolonging of awkward sexual tension. By the time Troy woke up both his hands had found their way underneath Abed's costume, which was impressive considering that all of its seams were sealed shut by that all-purpose staple of costume designers everywhere, duct tape.

"Come on, man," Troy says, looking at Abed sidelong with a frowning tilt to his lips. "You could make this easier on me."

"I could," Abed says congenially, leaning over and sliding an arm around Troy's shoulders, "but I won’t."

Troy grumbles, but they walk in companionable silence, their feet automatically starting to step in time. Left, right, left, right. Abed finds the rhythm soothing.

"Sorry about your costume," he says, because he is. They found the wreckage of what was left of it, though they still couldn't figure out why it was torn to pieces.

"I deserved it," Troy says, hanging his head. "I never should have abandoned you like that."

"You were there when it mattered," Abed says. It isn't relevant that he doesn't specifically know to when or what he's referring. He knows he's right.

Troy's head peeks back up, like a beak emerging from behind a protective wing. Abed doesn't know why the lens of feathered creatures briefly slips over his eyes, but as it's nowhere near the strangest thing that's ever happened to him, he goes with it. Maybe it's a sign that next year he should talk Troy into being Hawkman.

"Really?" Troy says, and the raw hope on his face makes Abed want to do wildly strange things, like attempting his math homework left-handed while standing on his head or trying to drink water through his nose or watching the movie _Clueless_ and _not_ seeing it as a parable on the moral, spiritual and intellectual degradation brought on by the inevitable material excesses of capitalism.

Kissing Troy, not a part of the mental montage of odd but theoretically possible actions, is simultaneously simpler and infinitely more complicated than any of those things.

Troy's lips are pliant, widened – perhaps in surprise, perhaps in response – and Abed flicks his tongue out, sliding into the moment. His forwardness makes his elbows tingle. They part, both drawing back as if in response to some silent cue.

"Dude," Troy says, his eyelids descending and ascending in time-dilated slow motion. "You kissed me."

"Something of an inevitability, all things considered." Abed purses his lips, considering how to proceed. He opts for transparency. "Also, I'm about six and a half seconds from kissing you again, so if you have any objections, now would be the ideal time to voice them."

"Just one," Troy says, casually, sauntering half a step closer.

Abed, contrarian that he is, only offered that conversational opening because he was sure Troy would have nothing to say. This number – one – multitasks by both surprising and annoying him. "I don't understand what possible obj–"

The rest of Abed's words are swallowed up in Troy's mouth, which is suddenly right up against Abed's, and pretty demanding of his immediate attention. Troy's forwardness makes Abed's knees tingle. As a descriptor of this turn of events, pleasant would be a vast understatement.

Troy steps back, lips quirked in a half-smile. "Now, that? Was my official protest that you were trying not only to beat me to the punch once, but _twice_." He shakes his head like he's disappointed in Abed. "Not on, man."

Abed weighs the matter. "That's fair," he concludes, and tilts his head magnanimously in accession. "Consider your complaint lodged."

"Good," Troy says, seemingly satisfied. "Now can we go somewhere that has central heating? I think my skin has actually started shrinking."

"You definitely need a blanket," Abed agrees, noting the near-ubiquitous pebbling of goosebumps on Troy's skin. "I know just the thing."

*

They don't end up watching anything. They are sprawled out artfully on the couch, Troy nestled under Abed's arm, his hair tickling Abed's jawline and his fingers running circles around Abed's bellybutton. Abed, when he realized that Troy intended to don a shirt, convinced him not to by shedding his own; their skin is very warm where it comes in contact and Abed has strategically positioned the pillows around them for maximum comfort. The loudest noise is the humming whir of the space heater punctuated by the sharp crackles of expanding metal and Abed is as content as he's ever been. This is very likely the best Halloween he's ever had, barring the year that he was a scale model accurate Death Star, because that's the sort of pinnacle experience that only happens once in a lifetime and he's sure Troy would understand.

"Night, Abed," Troy mumurs, the circles of his fingers slowing and his palm coming to rest over Abed's bellybutton.

Abed breathes in, his stomach expanding against Troy's hand, and says, "Good night, Troy."

As he's falling asleep, he thinks that he hears Troy mumble _I wonder why Abed never told me about the time he was a Death Star,_ and Abed wants to tell him that Troy will absolutely be the first person he tells once he finds the words to encapsulate the sheer rapture he experienced, but he writes it off as the still-lingering aftereffects of the supposedly perfectly legal drug the people with the guns gave them and burrows down a little deeper into Troy and their nest of pillows.

**Author's Note:**

> Check out the [amazing podfic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/593060) that tomorrowwith has done!


End file.
